Jerry McMillan

Jerry McMillan is a Los Angeles photographer by way of Oklahoma City. After moving to California, McMillan played a vital role as a documentor of the mid-century Los Angeles art scene, collaborating closely with artists, including fellow Oklahomans Ed Ruscha and Joe Goode. Ruscha, Judy Chicago, and Barbara T. Smith are among the artists whose public images came to be widely recognized, thanks to the often whimsically staged role-playing McMillian captured. While McMillan is known primarily as a photographer and catalog designer, he also developed his own artistic expression using photography as an experimental medium. He is one of the pioneers of photo-sculpture, and was a dedicated creator of photographic three-dimensional objects throughout his career. 

McMillan's photo-sculptures, including the sculptures known as "paper bags" that are included in the GRI holdings, were included in the landmark 1970 exhibition Photography into Sculpture, curated by Peter C. Bunnell at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as well as recreations at Cherry and Martin Gallery (2012) and Hauser + Wirth Gallery (2014). A retrospective of Jerry McMillan’s work was presented at Cal State Northridge during Pacific Standard Time in 2012. McMillan’s photo archives are now housed at the Getty Research Institute.